Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1167
Haidt again, Kipnis old school, Man Nup, Abriction, anchors, bench sanders, Turtle platforms, Substack search, Substack followers vs subscribers, media in GMHHAY
Good morning. Hello. Sorry I’m a bit late (note from Future Rick: turns out I was not late. It took 48 minutes to compose, edit and annotate this whole entry). Had to drop off a Mac cable to the guest at Chore house, had to take out the compost, and fulfill an order for my criminally underrated wedding planning guide Man Nup: A Groom’s Complete Guide to Heroic Wedding Planning. Consider buying a copy for the groom-to-be in your life. And of course that meant remembering my Squarespace password and finding my phone to put the 2FA in, and logging into Stamps.com and then wondering why Stamps.com doesn’t do tracking numbers for first class postage anymore and wondering if I should keep paying for that thing.
I am listening to the new album by solo metal artist Meredith Salvatori, of Huntsville, Alabama, better known as Abriction. It rules. She is awesome. My friend Annie said something wise the other day: “I like goth. I like metal. But not goth metal.” Abriction is not goth metal, but it is sort of shoegazy post rock metal. Shoegaze metal and post rock metal are allowed. Just not goth metal.
Some outstanding open items from recent editions:
I would like to issue a correction. Hamas did not accept a ceasefire, they made a good-faith counterproposal. And Israel does not seem to have invaded Rafah yet, it seemed to have been a measured response to some Hamas rocket attacks. I stand corrected. And Joe Biden actually fucking paused (just paused) a weapons shipment (just a single weapons shipment) to Israel this week to use as leverage to endeavor to keep Israel from invading Rafah, so, um, yeah optimism in the face of famine today I guess.
Relatedly, Drake did not make a diss track about genocide, but Macklemore sure did. Damn.
Oh huh you know, I have lost a couple subscribers lately for the first time, and I assumed it was because of Substack and their new “follower” BS, where they are making it very easy to “follow” a writer, and more people are just doing that rather than subscribing. With a subscription, you get access to their email address, so if (I mean when) you want to leave Substack, you can take the reader with you. Not so with followers. I have been getting tons of followers lately, and fewer subscribers. And for the first time, I lost two subscribers. I mean I have probably lost subscribers before, but this was a net loss, which has never happened. And I just assumed it was the Substack thing.
But then Luke O’Neil posted yesterday about how ever since he has been speaking out on Gaza (and boy is he), he has been “bleeding subscribers.” I am hardly “speaking out” about it much more than any other topic — I absolutely talk about car drop off or gardening or turtle docks about 10x the amount I talk about all international affairs, so I don’t wanna give me undue credit here — but I am talking about it, Gaza. It is, of course, a phenomenally divisive issue in the US, and a divisive issue on the left in the US in a way I have not seen in my lifetime. So, hrm, yeah, maybe that’s why I’ve net lost subscribers.
Just occurred to me.
Alas.
I would also like to apologize to Substack because the issue of GMHHAY wherein I recounted the story of my friend being mauled by a bear except then it turning out that it wasn’t true and me learning in 2020 that the whole thing was a hoax perpetuated by his parents to cover up a suicide, well, that was in an edition of GMHHAY in the 200s or so, before I moved over to Substack from Facebook, so it would not have been searchable in their archives. (Note from Future Rick: Though I did just use their search function again to find my original Justa Store reference and yeah, the search is terrible. Never mind.)
And thank you to Anne in San Francisco who pointed me to this excellent deep dive from Melinda Wenner Moyer into the footnotes and science behind Jonathan Haidt’s new book about how terrible social media is. It is a fairly balanced look, and does what I have been looking for: dives into his footnotes and checks if the sources say what he says they do. The tldr; sort of. He is being hyperbolic and they are often far more, or should I say less, definitive than he implies. It is worth your time.
Moyer’s essay is absolutely solid, but it’s also a bit too “yeah it’s bad but blaming parents and freaking them out isn’t healthy” for my tastes. Like, if things are bad, it’s up to me to decide whether I’m freaked out or not, people cannot freak me out exactly. And, like, of course it’s not parents fault, I don’t find that to be the case or feel like people are telling me it’s my fault anymore than I do about PFOAs or microplastics. These things suck, they all “do some good” and they are all “not our fault” and we as parents are mostly helpless to do anything about it and we shouldn’t feel guilty, but we can still know.
It seems from afar (I’m never gonna read this thing who am I kidding) that Haidt’s book is a polemic. I am overly-influenced by Laura Kipnis’ Against Love, wherein she says in the foreword: yes, this book is extreme. It is a polemic. That is what polemics are. They are one-sided and extreme. It’s up to you, the intelligent reader, to parse out your appropriate response. Mine, in the end, turned out to be something along the same lines with Kipnis as Haidt: yes, Laura, you are right, love is mostly is dumb, but it’s not our fault and it also has its benefits and is wicked fun and that’s just society and there’s not much I can do about it and it doesn’t really matter that much anyway.
Kipnis had the foresight to subtitle her book “A Polemic,” though. That was smart. Haidt doubled down on the hyperbole: “How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” Good lord dude, chill.
Jane has gotten very into my all natural, Stevia-based Ginger Ale. And before you freak out, same balance as just discussed. The girl has maybe a quarter cup of the stuff a day, tops. BUT get this. It is her first interaction with carbonation and she just loves it. She said:
“It’s like a bunch of tiny stars twinkling in my mouth.”
Shit yeah.
Woah that was a long ramble on open points. Speaking of open points and rambling, thank you to all for the birthday wishes. It was a decent birthday. The rambling and non-sequiturs in GMHHAY were definitely a highlight. My wife got me what I asked for, so that is great. My daughter made me a super cute card. Actually my wife made me a super cute card too. And my mother in law got me a swell present.
And I got the second coat of anti-fouling marine paint on the bottom of the turtle platform. That was an adventure, since I seem to have misplaced the hose to my paint sprayer, and oh, boo hoo, I had to go to the hardware store on my birthday and buy shit that was just very sad. Though I seem to have already misplaced my new hammer in the shopping cart or something. Boo hoo.
I also managed to get my truck washed but it was a crappy machine wash but at least it looks clean from a distance now. Maybe not up close, but looking clean from a distance is still an improvement.
Oh and I bought myself a cheap anchor and a cheap bench sander. Wen, man. Those tools are cheap AF and… not terrible? Brilliant to focus solely on the corded market.
Oh I think I also figured out my garden sink hose situation. Fish cleaning tables! A whole world of products I did not know about that combine hose attachments, faucets and counter tops. This one allows you to detach the faucet, and also has a faucet, a faucet-to-hose adaptor, a splitter, and a sprayer. I sense a lot of teflon tape in my future.
I hope you noticed how hard I worked to put a bunch of links into this issue.
Nick sent me this awesome photo of my old band yesterday for my birthday. Shit we need to put Rockets on Bandcamp. Anyway this is probably from 1997 or so, and we are playing in the yard of Red House in Allston. That’s Vicky, our second bass player. Craig and Annie and I were just talking about her this weekend, joking we were gonna reunite the band with her instead of Aug (don’t worry Aug we still love you).
Miss that mop of white hair.
And yes, this raises a question about media in GMHHAY. Like why do I list what I am listening to every morning, and yet have an additional, different Media of the Day. And then on top of both of those, you often insert photos of colored vinyl that is neither the record you are currently listening to nor the Media of the Day. This is a good question. I do not know, exactly. Though I acknowledge it is illogical. But it feels right, so right, so we are going to keep doing it right now.
And the colored vinyl photo gallery page is really coming along, so, you know. That project brings me little bits of joy every year or so when I look at them all on one page.
Media of the Day is a mix of the day, volume 237 of Justa Mix. It ends with an absolutely bangin’ new Abriction tune that I just listened to, and it is really a branching out for her and I am into it. Thank you Aug for the Rinse/Hatchie heads up. New Caroline Polacheck today from the soundtrack to that film I wanna see by that woman who did We Are All Going to the World’s Fair which was a more suave commentary on teens and social media than Jonathan Haidt could ever make. Been talking about the finnish Sepikka for a while, he is fantastic wish I knew more about him, and I just heard James is on tour with.. um… a Gallagher maybe? Nope Johnny Marr. They are playing Boston. But it’s at the Orpheum I do not want to see James in a theater. Looks like the Warner in DC, don’t know it, and the Eastern in Atlanta, don’t know it, but they are both called “theaters,” so, meh. Paramount in New York, pass. Warfield in SF, not completely a theater that wouldn’t be bad, and oh, lookee here. Stubbs in Austin. Been a while, miss you Austin. That would be the one for me, theoretically.
So many links look at em all I’m a like a newsletter publisher or something. Bye!